Toronto has already decided to erase the memory of Scottish imperialist Henry Dundas from one of its most important thoroughfares. Now a campaign is under way for a second Canadian city to drop the name from its central street of the man who is accused of prolonging the slave trade.
The authorities in London, Ontario, are reviewing who and what is publicly commemorated in the city, which is an important university centre. Campaigners want the name of Dundas Street, which has an outdoor event space called Dundas Place, to be changed
Madison Milanczak, of the Black Students’ Association at London’s Western University, told CBC, a Canadian TV station, that figures in the slave trade were still on a “pedestal”. She said: “It’s not like it’s the best news in the world, learning that one of the major streets in London is named after someone who contributed heavily to slavery, to the killing of my ancestors, to my family.” Toronto dropped the Dundas name last month after a lengthy historical investigation into his career. It said it would compensate the city’s many businesses affected by the change.
The politician, ennobled as the first Viscount Melville, amended a bill abolishing slavery to make the process more gradual. Earlier this year a peer-reviewed Scottish study of his life also highlighted Dundas’s role in drafting enslaved men into the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. A group of campaigners led by Bobby Melville, a descendant of Dundas, had claimed the politician was an abolitionist, but a gradualist one.
So far no Scottish local authority has removed Dundas’s name from a street — he has roads named after him in several parts of the country. Edinburgh has installed information boards at the Melville Monument outlining his role in slavery.
